Swann
Character As a hero Swann might seem a little limited at first to a new player with his melee attack against ground units and lack of big damage abilities but as you play him you'll find he has other strengths pretty quickly. Swann is the best siege hero in the game with his turrets and tanking ability. If you need to take out an entrenched enemy hive then you need Swann, his turrets can lay down an amazing amount of sustained damage and his hellfire turrets in particular have one of the longest range attacks in the game with enough talents which is great for both bosses and enemy hatcheries. When the enemy horde tries to press through to damage your turrets Swann can put himself between them and hold the line alone for extended periods of time with some of the strongest defense perk available to heroes thanks to adaptive armor and other skills. So where does Swann fall short? Well he is a very slow pusher for a lot of the game and struggles early on with energy and cooldowns thanks to his need to split focus between putting down turrets and tanking damage. He also has a hard time with some bosses unless left to prepare for just the right amount of time. You have to be very careful with Swann if you want to keep you damage numbers high but your tankiness lets you recover from mistakes even if it does set you back. In 2019 patch, Swann's turrets can attack buildings and has insane range without causing lag, a major improvement. He can also stack up to 5 turrets when not using them. Once you get Satellite Uplink, this can be used to quickly set up 4-turret kill pods. If enemies happen to run into one of yours, run to the other pods. Perks Priority Useful Perks * Absorption: very important in early game to make Swann becomes viable or help clearing the map while other heroes are still weak. If you don't want to pick Energy Mastery then this is the right choice. This won't make Swann's energy regen high enough to chain cast everything, but it is useful if you want to use your Mastery point for something else. * Leadership: only pick this if you pick Helldiver or unit drop talents. * Helldiver: one of the best buffs to Swann in 2019 update. They are much stronger than regular drop pods and can handle Zerg drop pods easily, allowing Swann to run away. Useless Perks * Onslaught: Swann never fights directly and only with his turret. He also suffers from drop pods in harder modes, so this perk is useless. Just run away from the pods. * Bug Zapper: when enemies come close, just run. The drop pods can be handled easier with Helldivers perk. Swann is also never on the front-line so this perk will only activate on drop pods, but it is not strong enough to kill them. * Toxic waste: you're never on the front line, so there won't be a lot of enemies to use this perk on. The drop pods are too powerful and your Flaming Betty is more than enough for AOE damage. So-so Perks * Air Support: only if you play solo and need to push to a highground location. * Mercenary: You won't spend a lot of time running into enemies in early game, but if you play solo, it might be useful for aggressive nuking. Example Hellwalker Mastery / perk Order Perks: # Compartmentalization - Required Mastery. You do lack one mastery to be ready for specific enemies. Furthermore this speeds turret spam up. # Leadership - Required Mastery. Insane buff to your Turrets. # Air Support - Vision on highground. Otherwise useless. You need this if you play solo, skip in groups. # Doomsday - needed if you want to nuke. You should take this in groups. # Bug Zapper - needed if you have to play with brutalisks. Brutalisks stick on you with that one. # Weaponsmith - You can get this for an earlier damage increase. Not needed but makes your life easier. # Absorption - Take this for mana-safe runs. On max level you dont need the mana regen but you'll be mana starved without this if you dont get all energy regen talents early on. Really, you want this. # Beginner recommendation: Compartmentalization, Leadership, Weaponsmith, Absorption. Mastery: # (Level 0 - from Perk:) Lightweight Equipment Mastery - More Stuff. # (Level 0:) Haywire Missile Mastery - Early game Energy and a nice buff to Gatling Turret. You can easily delay this if you get a nice energy talent. # (level 10:) Fists of Fury Mastery - see Armor. # (level 20:) Armor Mastery - you will be at 60 armor with adaptive armor from talents pumping you up to 100 armor. You are immune to almost every damage in this game. Except bosses, Hive Guards, Ultralisks, any spelldamage (Biles, Toxic gas) and armor piercing Flesheater. Most important, immune to Nightmares. Nightmare drops start on level 40. You can tank them now. Those guards at roughly 10 minutes? They hit you for 10 damage now. Your part in a group game is to take hits, so your teammates can safely shoot at the enemies. # (level 30:) Combat Architect Mastery - Autorepair on Turret's fixes WBF weirdness and we basically just want Satellite. A lot of Satellite. And your selfheal. You can skip this if you get score before level 40. So delay this as long as possible. # (Level 30 - safe point for:) Satellite Uplink Mastery - They got changed a bit, currently 1 tower powers up every tower in his range. They do not stack anymore (atleast on gatling - not sure about hellfire turret). They provide vision and detection. It is recommended to have atleast one of them near your towers then build them for detection and vision while running to the front. Doubles the damage of your towers. # Energy Mastery - Necessary unless you're lucky with Talents or have Absorption perk. # Weapons Research Mastery - Damage increase. # Big Game Hunter - More damage against stuff that matters. # Weakspot - Necessary for Behemoth, helps for high armored enemies. Just that there are almost no high armored enemies. Probably at level 60 or 70 for you. # Frontal Assault - Helpful to keep turrets alive? I don't think this is useful. Your armor does not work that well with shields. Any damage that will kill your turrets will still kill your turrets. # Nuke Mastery - this is not necessary. Any kind of survival mastery for yourself helps. If you plan to nuke take this on level 70. # Iron man - snare resistance may be necessary for you if you want to run with brutalisks. Dead turrets don't help at all. It is necessary for you that you know what happens - so you can move away from your turrets before ultralisks drop. Try to keep your turrets alive - but stick with your team. You're a melee support. Be closer to the enemy than your teammates. Let the enemy hit you. If you stick in base with swann then you are useless. Should mention when your team pulls Omegalisk you need some turrets prepared in base. Every other boss does not need preparation time. By the way, armor in starcraft works this way: 40 armor, 50 dmg then you take 10 dmg. 40 armor, 41 dmg then you take 1 damage. 40 armor, 39 damage then you take 1 damage. Damage - armor = result. Key Talents Masteries Notes